THE KITCHEN AND ME

Thanks to my sister-in-law’s prompting, I actually baked this weekend. We made zucchini bread, and I made peanut-butter-kiss cookies and peppermint bark (I did everything but smash the peppermints with a hammer, which I enlisted Philip's help with). I wanted to take a picture and frame it when I was done, because not only is it rare to find me voluntarily in the kitchen, but it’s also a major deal when I actually succeed in what I set out to do with cooking utensils in hand.

Now, you should know that I also destroyed a perfectly promising batch of sugar cookies by mistakenly adding too much salt and neglecting to add enough sugar. So maybe in my subconscious I was trying to make salt cookies. Don’t laugh; that could be the next big thing.

At any rate, my relationship with the stove is love-hate, mostly hate. I catch things on fire, I explode glass dishes, I burn the bottom and smush the top, etc. Cooking is supposedly straightforward — you just follow the directions — yet I constantly encounter problems. Steps that are too vague — “add salt to taste” — huh? Tools that I can’t control, like the mixer, which sends sugary chunks all over the room. Tools I don't have, like a blender; hence the hammer for the peppermints. Basic common sense that I lack, like, don’t put metal in the microwave or paper in the oven.

But something compels me to keep trying, and I’m not sure if it’s my admirable inner drive to conquer the dragon against all odds, or if it’s just leftover domestic guilt that I’m a woman and therefore I should be able to do this dammit.

It does feel really good though when I actually create something not only edible, but yummy too. Which after a little bit of trial and error yesterday, I did. So yay!